Sunday, 18 March 2007

- I've been to Throgmorten's a lot, and everyone has been very impressed, although the real ale supply seems a bit dodgy. There's almost always one or two on, though it usually tends to be the less interesting ones left; one day there was none at all as "the beer lorry couldn't get down the street because of the building works..." which is either true, or at least an inventive excuse.

- I've taken lots of new people to my club, and they've mostly either been gobsmacked or freaked out, or both. As is usual with any evening out attended by Messrs Lorkin and Gardner, one visit descended into a messy end where were approached by a nice lady offering to take us on to a "new £8m nightclub in Knightsbridge". This may well have been true, but we think we actually narrowly escaped being recruited by a cult, or bundled into the back of van and murdered in Epping Forest, or both. On the other hand it might just have been a piece of performance art. It's that kind of place.

Garders recovered with some performance art himself (OK, the coin through the rubber magic track) for some nice ladies on the train back to Essex.

- As previously reported, I had the ManFlu and missed the Walton pub crawl, though I understand it was a rip-roaring success, with much ale drunk, and some of the resulting hangovers lasting into a second day. Good work fellas, as I believe they said in the 90s! However, I did manage a replacement night out with Mr Wallis. He liked The Throg, where their musical choice of Hendrix and Belle & Sebastian seemed somewhat out of place with the 20s ocean liner atmosphere. He was suitably freaked out by my club, which this time had a banjo player. And we ended up in The Rake at Borough Market - which unfortunately - given it was small to start with - has now become deservedly very popular and therefore crowded. When a city boy - who clearly wasn't used to drinking anything stronger than Carling - pushed Nick out of the way and he rightly objected, I thought it was going to kick off. Nick had also realised that I am (a little) taller than him, and he told me his plan was to hide behind me. It is in situations like this that you learn who your friends are!

- Giacomo and I planned a pub crawl of the City, to find some new pubs, none of which were much good. He brought his camera to record the occasion; here's some of the best.

We started in a new one - the Cock and Woolpack on Finch Lane (no, no idea why it's called this...) which is on a little back street. For some reason, Giacomo thought the glasses there were very small. It turned out that either the barmaid had big hands, or that the glasses were very far away.

Then on for another visit to the ever-popular Throgs.

And next door to Throgs, by way of contrast is a shockingly-awful place called The Phoenix, whose only redeeming feature is that it is no smoking throughout. While they use this to promote the pub with the slogan "a pub with atmosphere", on the night we visited this couldn't have been further from the truth. While I probably over-use the description "like an airport departure lounge", this one really was.

Friday, 2 March 2007

When I saw the headline above, I thought my work in the fields of radio and, er, pubs might have at last been recognised.Reading on, while I was naturally disappointed that this wasn't actually the case, the accolade was clearly well deserved...

THE widow of the legendary broadcaster John Peel has given her seal of approval to a new pub named after her late husband.

Sheila Ravenscroft said she was “absolutely delighted” that The Ravenscroft has been opened up in the legendary Radio One DJ's birthplace of Heswall on the Wirral.More...